The interview on the disc with De Palma and Noah Baumbach is a must-see too great to hear him talk about Hitchcock, Antonioni, and Coppola and their influence on this film. Blow Out begins with De Palma turning the camera on himself and criticisms against him, then ends with one of the crueller, blacker chapters in cinema. He plays us like an instrument, maneuvers us like puppets, and frequently makes us look where we’d rather not. Some directors are great storytellers without their presence being felt, but De Palma, much like his cinematic hero Alfred Hitchcock, is a master manipulator of both his medium and his audience. In the telling of this audiovisual thriller, De Palma uses Steadicam work, split screens, split diopter shots, and complex optical effects to utterly exciting but never overly flashy effect. There’s not a wasted shot, not even a wasted corner of frame. Blow Out is certainly one of De Palma’s finest. Even the lesser works of De Palma contain flashes of genius, while the best of his movies rank as pure cinema. There’s a reason that, back in the seventies, fellow movie brats Spielberg, Lucas, and Scorsese would defer to De Palma as “the filmmaker.” When on form, his work is something to behold. I am proud to say that I am a huge fan without any caveats. I have heard people call themselves Brian De Palma apologists.
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